Such Faithfulness in Effigy
by chaletian
Summary: There are stories about Arthur and Guinevere of Camelot, stories that have echoed down century after century, and who can say what’s true and what’s not? Stories stay stories, until archaeologists uncover Camelot.


**Such Faithfulness in Effigy**

**by Liss Webster**

"Camelot."

"Yeah."

"Fucking _Camelot_."

Sally Pope, who has been working for the last couple of years on the Camelot dig, rolls her eyes, unseen by Huw Davis, the latest member of their team.

"Yes," she says again. "Actually Camelot. Well," she adds conscientiously, "we're still not sure what it was called contemporaneously. Obviously it's separate from Cardiff – that's about forty miles away – so there goes that theory. I assume you've done all the background reading?"

Huw grins. "Come on – who hasn't? I mean, since this place was found?" He looks set to begin on another round of 'fucking _Camelot_s', and Sally quickly points to a large tent set up next to a trench.

"Come and look at some of the stuff we've found since we started excavating the chapel. There's an amazing number of artifacts. The castle was clearly a major centre of population in this area – we still haven't determined the outer limits of the surrounding town." It's early spring, and the continual excavations have left the ground sodden and dark; the day is drawing on, and the skies are grey. Sally reaches out a mittened hand and pulls back the heavy canvas of the tent, and pauses as someone shouts her name from down in the trench.

"Sally! Come and look at this!"

"We've found another chamber!" comes another voice, this one younger. "Quick, Sal, you have to see this!"

Sally leans into the tent to extract a torch from the metal utility shelving, and passes it to Huw, then grabs another one for herself.

"Ladder's that way," she says, nodding towards one end of the trench. "Mind – it's slippery. Pissed it down this morning."

They climb down, and Sally leads the way, hugging her coat closer in the chilly early evening air. "The chapel was pretty big," she explains as they walk through a sunken hall. "Altar was that end. You can see the plinth. Christianised, of course, though there are some signs of pre-Christian influence, mostly Druid. A lot of that stonework was defaced, so it looks like the Druids lost favour at some point. We're hoping to find some kind of written archive, but nothing's turned up so far. We'll be excavating for years, naturally." They duck under an archway, into a crypt still lined with stone coffins.

"What about these?" asks Huw.

"We're still working on them. Given their positioning and what we found in here – evidence of weaponry, even some shields, though they're in awful condition – we're thinking maybe soldiers. Knights." She casts a sudden suspicious eye at Huw. "If you're the sort to burst into Monty Python…"

Huw holds up his hands defensively. "Definitely not. I promise. Still. Knights of Camelot." He shakes his head. "That's… really something, y'know?"

Sally relaxes and grins. "I know. It's… there just aren't any words. Anyway, this chamber's in bad nick. There's a watercourse down that side, and it's ruined nearly everything. Metal's rusted, wood's rotted – you name it, it's gone. Still, we should still be able to get some information out of it all. Anyway, where did Mike go? He and Claire were working in here."

"Maybe they…" starts Huw, only to break off as a man appears suddenly at the back of the chamber, as if out of thin air. He's tall and thin, with dark hair and bright eyes, and he grins enthusiastically.

"We found another chamber!" he says exultantly, without waiting for any sort of introduction. "I _knew_ it! I just _knew_ there was something beyond this one!"

"What d—"

Sally can't get the words out before the Mike is hustling them through. "You have to see this. It's amazing. It's… you have to see it." They pass through a narrow passage in the wall that's clearly just been made, and Huw thinks that of course they must be using sonar and everything, because how else could anyone know there was something on the other side of a millennium-old stone wall?

The next chamber is smaller, the roof lower. It's colder and darker, as well, damp surrounding them like a clammy fist. The torches shine on the focal point of the room: a large effigy with two people sculpted on it. Sally leans over, careful not to touch anything.

"Local stone, same as the outer chamber. Looks to be a similar style from what we have to work on. Come and look, Huw."

Huw comes and looks. The man is in armour, featureless, a cipher. A knight. No, he can see something else. There's a crown. A shiver runs down his spine, and for a second he can't breathe. It's a king. A king of Camelot. He drags his gaze to the woman. Her features are blurred by time (so much time), and all he can make out are flowing robes and a hint of curl and the points of a crown.

"Look," says Sally softly, pointing to the middle of the effigy. The two figures, the faceless king and featureless queen, are holding hands. "It's how someone wanted them remembered," she says.

There's a hand on both their arms, and Mike pulls them away. "_Look_," he says again, and points at the end of the tomb, to disintegrating letters carved into stone. Two torches shine on the words, and two frowns appear as Sally and Huw attempt to make sense out of the crumbling Latin.

"I don't believe it," says Huw flatly, after a minute. "I… I can't believe it can be _real_. I mean, they're just stories. How can such old stories be true? And, I mean, not even true, because she betrayed him, everyone knows…" He trails off and stares at the letters, and Sally reaches out fingers that hover millimetres away.

"It's real," she says. "There's so much here, Huw, you can't even imagine. And this - _this_…"

"But everyone knows the stories," says Huw, and Sally grins up at him and shakes her head.

"Those stories are over a millennium old. We don't know who first told them or why. Things can get muddled in a…a game of Chinese whispers – how much easier after centuries? We have no idea what happened, not really. All we can do is look at the evidence. And this," she says, standing straight and facing the effigy, "this is evidence."

They stare at the faceless king and the featureless queen, and the inscription stares back at them: _SEMPER ARTOR GVINHVMARAM AMAT_.

FIN

A/N: The fic and title were inspired by Philip Larkin's poem, An Arundel Tomb.


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